Foundation  /  Al-Ājurrūmiyya  /  Lesson 1

What speech is, and its three kinds

Materials

• Follow along with this lesson The handout — the text, the parsing, and the notes on one sheet PDF
• The whole book — English Our own translation PDF

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الكَلاَمُ: هُوَ اللَّفْظُ المُرَكَّبُ المُفِيدُ بِالوَضْعِ. وَأَقْسَامُهُ ثَلاَثَةٌ: اسْمٌ، وَفِعْلٌ، وَحَرْفٌ جَاءَ لِمَعْنًى. فَالاِسْمُ يُعْرَفُ بِالخَفْضِ، وَالتَّنْوِينِ، وَدُخُولِ الأَلِفِ وَاللاَّمِ، وَحُرُوفِ الخَفْضِ، وَهِيَ: مِنْ، وَإِلَى، وَعَنْ، وَعَلَى، وَفِي، وَرُبَّ، وَالبَاءُ، وَالكَافُ، وَاللاَّمُ. وَالفِعْلُ يُعْرَفُ بِقَدْ، وَالسِّينِ، وَسَوْفَ، وَتَاءِ التَّأْنِيثِ السَّاكِنَةِ. وَالحَرْفُ: مَا لاَ يَصْلُحُ مَعَهُ دَلِيلُ الاِسْمِ وَلاَ دَلِيلُ الفِعْلِ.

Al-kalāmu huwa l-lafẓu l-murakkabu l-mufīdu bi-l-waḍʿ. Wa-aqsāmuhu thalāthatun: ismun, wa-fiʿlun, wa-ḥarfun jāʾa li-maʿnā. Fa-l-ismu yuʿrafu bi-l-khafḍi, wa-t-tanwīni, wa-dukhūli l-alifi wa-l-lāmi, wa-ḥurūfi l-khafḍ. Wa-l-fiʿlu yuʿrafu bi-qad, wa-s-sīni, wa-sawfa, wa-tāʾi t-taʾnīthi s-sākinah. Wa-l-ḥarfu mā lā yaṣluḥu maʿahu dalīlu l-ismi wa-lā dalīlu l-fiʿl.

Speech is the utterance that is composed, that conveys a complete sense, and that is so by convention.

Its divisions are three: a noun, a verb, and a particle that has come for a meaning.

The noun is recognised by khafḍ, by tanwīn, by the entry of alif-lām, and by the particles of khafḍ — which are: min, ilā, ʿan, ʿalā, fī, rubba, the bāʾ, the kāf, and the lām.

The verb is recognised by qad, by the sīn, by sawfa, and by the quiescent tāʾ of the feminine.

The particle is that with which neither the mark of the noun nor the mark of the verb is admissible.

Translation by Alyph Academy. We translate rather than reprint: the classical Arabic is public domain, published English translations are not.

Reading notes

• Start here, because everything else in the book depends on it. The matn opens by defining its subject and then dividing it. Nothing later in the text makes sense until you can look at a word and say which of three things it is.
• Four conditions, and each one is excluding something. اللفظ — lafẓ, an utterance — excludes writing and gesture; grammar here describes sound. المركب — murakkab, composed — excludes the single word: Zayd alone is not kalām. المفيد — mufīd — excludes a string that does not complete a thought: “if Zayd stood…” leaves the listener waiting, so it is composed but not mufīd. Read the definition as four filters and it stops being a list to memorise.
• The fourth condition is disputed, and this lesson does not settle it. بالوضع — bi-l-waḍʿ — is read by some commentators as by the convention of the Arabs, which excludes intelligible speech in another language, and by others as intentionally, which excludes the words of a sleeper or a parrot. Both readings are old and both are defended. Left open here on purpose.
• “Kalām” here does not mean what it means elsewhere. In grammar it is a technical term for a complete predicative sentence. It is not the ordinary word for talk, and it is not ʿilm al-kalām, the discipline of theology. A student who meets the word in three places and assumes one meaning will be confused in all three.
• Three parts of speech, not eight. This is the single most useful thing in the chapter and the place where a reader coming from English grammar has to put something down. Arabic has no separate category for adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, demonstratives or relatives. They are all ism. حسن (good), هو (he), هذا (this) — nouns, every one, and they behave like nouns.
• The particle is defined by failing both tests. Notice the asymmetry: the noun and the verb get positive marks, the particle gets none. It is the residual category — what is left when a word answers to neither set of signs. That is not sloppiness; it is the most efficient way to define a closed class whose members have nothing in common except that they carry meaning only in combination.
• The signs are tests, not requirements. The commonest beginner’s error is to read “the noun is recognised by khafḍ, tanwīn, alif-lām…” as though a noun must carry all four. It must carry none of them. Any one of them settles the matter — and two of them, tanwīn and alif-lām, can never appear on the same word, since the definite article and nunation exclude each other. So no noun ever displays the full list.
• Now the hadith. Open lesson 1 of the hadith course and read the first five words:
• إِنَّمَا الأَعْمَالُ بِالنِّيَّاتِ
• إِنَّمَا — try the tests. It takes no alif-lām; qad cannot precede it. It answers to neither set of marks, so by the last line of the chapter it is a ḥarf.
• الأَعْمَالُ — it carries alif-lām. Third sign. It is an ism, and you did not need to know what it meant to say so.
• بِـ — the bāʾ, and the matn has just named it in its own list of the particles of khafḍ. A ḥarf.
• النِّيَّاتِ — two signs at once. It carries alif-lām, and it is in khafḍ — the kasra on its final letter — because the bāʾ put it there. An ism, twice over.
• Every diagnostic in this chapter appears in the first line of the first hadith on this site. That is not a coincidence arranged for the lesson; it is what happens when a grammar written to explain Arabic prose is turned on Arabic prose. It is also the reason this course is taught this way rather than on invented sentences.
• One verb, to finish. The hadith continues وَإِنَّمَا لِكُلِّ امْرِئٍ مَا نَوَى. The lām in لِكُلِّ is another particle from the same list, and كُلِّ is in khafḍ after it. And نَوَى — he intended — takes the verb test: قَدْ نَوَى is sound Arabic, so qad admits it. A fiʿl. The signs of the verb are lesson 2.
• What you should be able to do now. Take any word in hadith 1 and say whether it is a noun, a verb or a particle, and name the sign that told you. Not what it means — what it is. That is the whole of this lesson, and the next twenty-nine are built on it.

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